


That Endless, Fatal Sleep

by DoreyG



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, F/M, Gen, Homesickness, Mentions of Lethe, Post-Canon, Thus loss of memory, creepily appropriate flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone doesn’t look like a queen when she comes to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Endless, Fatal Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the homesickness square on my HC_Bingo. Because the Hades and Persephone myth is still, after all this time, my absolute favourite. And Eurydice and Orpheus are also right up in the top ten.

Persephone doesn’t look like a queen when she comes to visit. Her mouth isn’t terribly strict, her look isn’t deathly pale. Her hair, long and blonde, glimmers brightly around her shoulders. Her smile is soft and flowers bud timidly where she lays her feet.

And her voice…

“I miss the world above sometimes,” is soft, quiet – with her hands in her lap and her clear green eyes staring out at nothing, “I love my dearest husband, so much more than others would think, but… I miss the bustle of the other gods and goddesses. My father and his booming voice and my aunt and her warm fire, my uncle and his raging seas and my sister-in-law and her unwise passions, my _siblings_ : Athena with her books and Artemis with her bow, Ares with his bared teeth and Apollo with his soft songs, _Hephaestus_ with his hot forge that could sculpt any metal.”

“I miss my mother,” no matter how many times she may visit it is always nothing, always that endless dark that lies beyond and her hands ever resting in her lap – skin made pale from lack of the sun, “her smile, her hair, her warm arms. The way she always smelled of wheat, of soil, of work and food and plenty. The way she used to laugh – loud and free and happy and like nobody could hear her. The way she would take me on her knee, and warn against men and parties and people who would be not at all good for me.”

“I miss the spring,” ever so pale, bone pale – a haunting ghost with green eyes and blonde hair and flowers timidly blooming around her feet: lilies and poppies and sweet peas symbolising that endless, fatal sleep that nobody can avoid, “the shoots forcing their way up through the frost, the sun starting to beam weakly down through the clouds, the animals starting to give birth one by one so there were chicks tweeting in the trees and lambs frolicking through the fields and even little cubs yawning with teeth not yet sharp.”

“I miss the summer,” not men, not women, not nymphs, not satyrs, not gods, not even goddesses that were once so young – once full of life and laughter and joy so bright that it practically blinded, “when the frost and clouds finally burned away and you were left with a red hot sun and bright blue sky, when the chicks and lambs and cubs started to grow older and run further with their mothers ambling slowly behind them, when you could spend days in the fields with the rustle of crops around you and not have to move a single inch to see something interesting.”

“I miss life,” but now nobody is blinded, and everybody is dull and dead and pale and ghostlike – shadows of what they once were even when they’re told that they should be so very merry and dancing, “those chicks growing into birds, those lambs into sheep, those cubs into wolves and lions and tigers. The farmers working the fields, the hunters grasping their spears. The nymphs hiding in their rivers and the dryads lurking in their trees. Everything beginning and growing and living and _being_ in such a beautiful way.”

“I _truly_ miss…” Because how can you be merry and dancing, when you are so far away from nearly everything you care about? “The world above. The gods and the goddesses, the mothers and the fathers, the springs and the births, the summers and the fields, the lives and the people, the _everything_ \- beaming and bright and wonderful and so very, _very_ beautiful.”

Nearly everything.

“But, then, I suppose it must be the same for you,” entirely everything, as Persephone looks at her with those sad green eyes, “so far away from life, so far away from your Orpheus with his lyre and his laugh and his love.”

…Just a pity that she can only stare at absolutely nothing too. And not remember her apparently dark haired and darker eyed husband, with his soft laugh and softer arms and softest bed where they may have coiled for hours together and forgot the whole world, with his maybe burning love and maybe desperate passion and determination maybe so strong that he walked all the way into the underworld and only failed on the very final step.

Persephone simply sighs after several minutes of silence, ever so gently pats her head as she rises to her feet and becomes the iron queen again – dread and cold and as perfect a ghoul as ever there was, “I’ll see you soon, Eurydice.”

And the next time she comes to visit she will look the opposite of a queen yet again, it’s just the way things go.


End file.
